


Underfell

by Lovova



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 13:40:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15583185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lovova/pseuds/Lovova
Summary: The brothers show up. They assert themselves.





	Underfell

**Author's Note:**

> This is a drabble I put up in Tumblr ages ago that I forgot about until recently XD I'm considering getting back into fanfiction, so I figured it'd be okay to post up some short pieces as a form of 'stretching'. This is just my idea of how Underfell could have gone. Please enjoy :)

The King, with his red eyes and that small, curious smile he always wears, decrees that the world is to “Kill or be killed” and it preaches that this is GOOD. Death…is RIGHT. Survival should be EARNED. Power TAKEN. And that anyone who disagrees, or helps those below them…is an IDIOT.

He did not always believe this. Everyone knows that before he took the soul of the first fallen human, life used to be very different. Almost kind.

But that was a long time ago.

And now he is full of DETERMINATION.  
-

Two skeletons appear one day. They assert themselves.

Papyrus, the large one, the strong one, kills three monsters the very first day. They had attacked as a group, and he, new and inexperienced, should have fallen. But fighting came naturally to him, and one by one they died, and afterwords he went and found Sans, for whom fighting had not come naturally; his instinct had screamed for him to run, to avoid, to dodge. While Papyrus had fought, Sans had fled.

They both sit around a fire that Sans, somehow, figures out how to light with nothing but vague, awful memories of things they both might have known once. They don’t talk. They are both thinking about the fight. Sans is guilty, feels he abandoned his brother in a time of need. Decides he will never do it again. Papyrus is considering the future. They both now know what kind of world they live in. Sans is fast, his magic strong, but his body is weak. No endurance. No power. No HP to buffer between his death and the world. Sans won’t last out here. Papyrus could. He is strong. He could get stronger still. He was designed for a world like this.

Papyrus comes to a decision.

He supposes that he is an IDIOT.

-

They stay in the woods. More monsters come to attack them in the night.

When they wake up, Papyrus is at his feet immediately. He attacks. He doesn’t think about what the dust at his feet and on his fists and between his teeth mean. He is surviving. This is necessary. This is the way the world is.

He looks back and expects to see Sans already gone, running into the shadows of the woods. He sees his brother, standing there, a monster in front of him. He sees the red of his brothers eyes and realizes Sans is going to try and fight this time. Fear erupts inside of Papyrus. That fear enrages him. He kills off his own monsters quickly, and before Sans fight can get very far, he kills Sans monster from behind.

Papyrus spends a long time that night yelling at Sans.  You can’t help, Papyrus tells him, you’ll just die! He says this over and over again. He sees defiance in Sans eye and grows frightened again. His brother had to understand. He needed to make the skeleton understand.

He hits Sans. He’s powerful, but there’s no intent to kill in his heart. Sans loses most of his single hit point, but not all of it. Sans looks up at him, terrified. Listening now. You don’t help, Papyrus commands now, you’re worthless, you’re useless, don’t even try, you’ll just get in the way. When there’s a fight, I fight, you hide and you wait for me you? Do you understand!?

Sans says he understands.

The next day, more monsters attack, always trying their luck at the new meat in town. Figuratively.

It’s getting easier to kill them. Papyrus wants them to die.  His LV and his EXP grows. When he looks back, he sees Sans in the woods, watching from a distance.

He is pleased.

-

Time goes by. Papyrus is beginning to make a name for himself. Sans no longer has to run and hide in the woods during fights. The creatures know better then to turn their backs on Papyrus now to attack him.  

There is a town called Snowden. A legion of powerful monsters have built a small, violent, but otherwise stable community there. They hoard resources, technology, food. There are a limited number of buildings to hold creatures, and to gain a home there a spot must be ‘vacated’.

A horde of creatures with large, buggy eyes, sharp claws and thin, furious wings lived in a house right in the center of Snowden.

Papyrus decides it’s a good enough house for himself and Sans.

Sans is nervous to move to the town. Nervous to be around monsters who view him as an easy way to earn some EXP. Spends a lot of time hiding in the room Papyrus gives him. Papyrus doesn’t like it. Papyrus forces Sans to come out with him. Takes him to a local bar named Grillby’s. Full of the local thugs and morons.

A dog eyes the bones on them hungrily the moment they walk in. When Papyrus is talking to the flaming bartender, the dog tries to take a tasting nibble on Sans. Sans is fast. The dog misses.

Papyrus does not.

And then, with all of the bar watching, Papyus kills the dog. It’s pack comes for him, big dogs, quick dogs, married dogs. He doesn’t kill these dogs. He beats them until they submit. He makes them Heel. He does this to show proof of his power, of his control. Partly because monsters need to understand. Partly because Sans needs to understand.

No one bothers the brothers when they go out anymore.

-

Every day, Sans grows more confident around other monsters. Goes out more. Visits Grillby’s more. Talks more. Doesn’t make friends, but finds plenty of people willing to have stupid, pointless conversations. Which are what he wants. He likes the fun stuff. Likes making stupid jokes and small bets, likes the little stories and tall tales. Feels comfortable amongst the filth and the garbage. That is his element.

Once, jokingly, he refers to himself as a smiling trashbag within earshot of his brother. His brother does nothing to him. But he almost kills the guy that Sans was making the joke too, who dared to laugh.

Every day, Sans grows more and more uncomfortable around Papyrus. Papyrus always seems to be unhappy with him. With everything. Papyrus just isn’t happy. The large skeleton doesn’t seem to know what to do with his time when he’s not fighting, and monsters now go well out of their way not to fight him. Amongst the snow and the woods, he is a legend, and word of him is even spreading to the Hotlands and the Capital. Sans thinks sometimes Papyrus doesn’t like that. Doesn’t like any of it. But he’s too afraid to ask and never will.

Sans decides to just count himself lucky to have such a strong brother.

-

Papyrus is trying to join the royal guard. They are the Kings monsters, and to be a member of the royal guard was to be recognized as one of the strongest, most violent monsters in the realm. Monsters treated you with respect and fear. The badge an open door and invitation to anything and everything you could possibly want to take. If he could get in, he and Sans could move to the capital, where Papyrus could be around people he could see as peers, and Sans would be safe without relying on the company of only drunk morons at the local bar to hang out with. It would be perfect.

You have to be invited into the royal guard. Papyrus decides one night to take the direct approach, and visit the Head of the Royal Guard…in her home. With his bones at ready. And fire in his eyes.

He loses the fight after a long, all night battle. But she’s impressed with his spunk. She agrees to let him in, but on one condition.

There’s someone who lives in the ruins next to that sleepy little town you terrorize, Undyne says.  The King wants that person. Go get her for us.

-

Papyrus tries everything.

The first thing he does is he searches the perimeter of the large stone walls that hide away the ruins, looks for any sort of obvious or less then obvious opening. None present itself, and in truth he hadn’t been expecting to find any anyway.

The next thing he tries it attacking the door to the ruins itself. He hits it with magic. He hits it with bone. He pounds against it with his thin skeleton fists. The door is magically reinforced. Or just very well made. Maybe both. He does not break it.

The wall itself cannot be so sturdy, he reasons, so he will go for the areas around the door. He recruits the pack of dogs to help him. They are his dogs now. They work together at his command to bring down the walls. They do it for hours. They rest and try again the next day. They do it again for a third.

The walls do not break.

Papyrus is angry. He is angry and a little afraid. He fought the realms toughest warrior and lost, and lived. He did not believe if he returned to her a failure, that the same scenario would play out again. Failure was an option: a highly unpleasant one.

What would happen to Sans if he died?

Anger to fear. Fear to rage. Rage was good. Rage he could use. He turned that rage against the door, against the walls, against the woman hiding behind them.

But still the ruins remained closed.

-

Papyrus comes home that night, and Sans is asleep on the couch, a show he wasn’t watching playing mindlessly as Mettaton showed off the latest weapons you could buy at discount if you called in right now! The noise of Papyrus returning stirs him, and Sans through the muddle of sleep asks how the days excursion went.

Ever since the trashbag incident, Sans spends a lot of time in the house, on the couch, not watching television. Sans will sometimes stay on that couch all day and night, and when he leaves it, sometimes that’s only to be in his room and stay there, all day and all night. Sans will sometimes go quiet for long periods of time, and not make eye contact even when he does talk. Despite doing nothing all day, Sans always seems to be tired.

Papyrus doesn’t like seeing his brother this way. Doesn’t like knowing that he is part of the reason that Sans has nothing to do with his time, no one to really hang out with, no mission in life. He wants San to get better. He wants Sans to fix himself He grows short-tempered with him. Did you clean the house today? No, Sans replies. The house isn’t dirty. Papyrus yells at him. Points out the dust. Points out stains on the floor. Wants Sans to care. To care about anything. To stop being sad and tired all the time. Calls him lazy. Calls him useless. Calls him weak. Throws an ugly lamp across the room and lets it shatter against a wall, turns over the couch that Sans is lying on, smashes in the television with a bone. Shards are everywhere. One of the couch pads exploded into flecks of Styrofoam. The living room is a mess. Tells Sans to clean it up. Locks himself in his room and tells himself that was the wake-up call Sans needed. That now Sans will find something to do with him time.

He’s not wrong. Sans cleans up the mess. When he’s done, he grabs his coat and goes out into the woods.

-

Sans tries one thing.

He knocks on the door.

Knock knock. He stops, waits. Knock knock. He stays there and waits. Sits down in front of the door. Leans against it. Knock knock. He doesn’t know what he’s doing out here. He’s not supposed to be here. If he got caught out here without Papyrus, a monster could try and kills him just to make a name for itself. He was fast. He could dodge and he could run. But if there was enough of them….knock knock.

Sometimes, when Papyrus wasn’t home, he would practice his magic. He was fast. His attacks weren’t strong, but he could throw them quickly enough to overwhelm an opponent. He thought, maybe, that he would actually stand a chance in a real fight, if he had enough practice. Thought about bringing that up to Papyrus. Thought about asking his brother to let him fight beside him. To help.

Thought about how worthless he was and laughed. Knock knock.

Who’s there? The door asks.

The door has a woman’s voice. Sans is almost too stunned to respond, but his brains jump starts and spits out the first thing that comes to mind. Dishes.

Dishes who?

Dishes a very bad joke.

The door howls with laughter, a high, manic cackle, and Sans smiles.

-

He’s out later then he wanted to be, and returns when it is almost morning. He is nervous. He doesn’t know what he is going to do. He knows what he should do. He knows what he wants to do. Those two things are not the same.

Papyrus is still asleep. Sans goes up to his room and doesn’t come out when Papyrus wakes up. Papyrus doesn’t bother him before he leaves and Sans doesn’t come out of his room when Papyrus comes back. They do not speak to each other the whole day.

Sans does not feel like he has betrayed Papyrus’s trust yet. He has not had the opportunity to tell him about the lady behind the door. The lady with the easy laughter and the clever jokes. The lady who isn’t afraid of him yet. She’s more fun then any drunken conversation with any thug at Grillbys he’s ever had. She’s even more fun then Grillby himself, who will occasionally talk to him, who was smart and cool under pressure, but who still feared his brother enough to keep his distance, and who Sans knew he sometimes reported to Papyrus, when his larger brother wanted to know how he was being treated, when he didn’t trust Sans answers.

He steals some joke books from the abandoned library in town and brings it to the door. Knock Knock. Who’s there? He reads a joke from his book, trying his best to make it sound casual, make it sounds practiced. Not sure if he really pulls it off. Sounds forced in his head.

The lady howls with laughter, and Sans feels accomplished.

-

Sans avoids his brother for a third day, and for a third night he goes to the door. That night, the lady laughs, but is clearly distracted. Sans is afraid to ask what’s up. Afraid she’s heard about who he is. Who is brother is. Afraid that she might be afraid.

Guess what? She says, and though she is attempting to sound casual, Sans can hear the nerves in her voice. I think I’ve got my hands on a human kid.

Sans doesn’t know what to say to that. Cool. He says. A human soul is powerful. King Asgore had once said that enough human souls could be enough to break the barrier, and rage war with the humans. Had promised rewards for the delivery of the soul, whole.

Sans asked the lady if she planned to collect the award. The lady said she believed she might love the child. Sans asked her why. She replied she doesn’t know.

Kids are hard to keep in a world like this, she says. They die all the time. Trust me, I know this more then most. When I look at this child, I can’t help but see the faces of all those I have lost. I guess I’m getting sentimental in my old age. I’d just like to see one of my children finally make it. I want one of them to grow up strong.

Okay. Sans says. He doesn’t know what to say. He likes the woman. He likes her a lot. But Papyrus wants to capture her. And he’ll want to know about the human child. Sans worries he’s getting in too deep.

Then she says, could you do something for me?

Sans says nothing.

The lady goes on regardless. The kid might escape, the lady says. It keeps trying too. It thinks I am frightening. It thinks my ruins are dangerous. It is naive. It does not understand how much worse it is on the outside. It is a little precious cinnamon roll, too kind for this world, whose best friend is this pathetic little talking flower, the two of them are so cute, I could throw up, it’s great! I fear its death will be a slow, horrifying one, at the hands of the king, so twisted and cruel now. I don’t want that for it. The thought makes me sad.

Please. If, somehow, the child gets past me, and leaves the ruins, please…could you ensure that they don’t die slow? Could you make sure their end is quick? That they do not suffer?

I just do not want them to suffer.

Sans does not want to promise. He wants to run from this whole conversation. He is good at running. But he likes the lady. He doesn’t want to disappoint her. He’s tired of being a disappointment.

Sure, he says. I can do that.

She laughs. She sighs. He feels proud. Needed.

She adds in, as an after thought; if you could keep it from dying at all, that’d be great too.

Sans curses under his breath, and the lady howls with laughter.


End file.
